File puptcrit/puptcrit.0606, message 394


From: Stephen Kaplin <skactw-AT-tiac.net>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:05:51 -0400
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] X(=Neo?)-puppetry


Dear Malgosia,
  Let me get this straight. Are you saying that the difference between 
neo- and traditional puppetry is whether or not the focus is on the 
illusion of life in the  performing object?
If that is the case than one of the best examples of the neo- genre is 
Taymor's "Lion King." The Lion Heads worn  on top of the actors heads 
are neo- because they merely imply "lion-ess"  (or is it "lionocity") 
while not literally portraying an illusion of a living lion. On the 
other hand, the shadow puppet lions from the same show are in strictly 
trad mode.
I think Jurkowski spelled out some of these ideas in his writings. He 
talks a great deal about the way puppet "signs" have changed over time, 
and he identifies the death of the illusion of life in the puppet as a 
characteristic of contemporary Western puppetry.
Stephen
On Jun 21, 2006, at 9:44 PM, malgosia askanas wrote:

> I didn't find the Japanese Google reference that Will mentioned.
> However, I found Sven's website very evocative, and it made me think
> of the exquisite animated films of Jan Svankmajer and of the Brothers
> Quay.  So I wonder whether the qualities that they all have in common
> may, in fact, be the defining qualities of what Sven calls
> "neo-puppetry".   Let me, for now, call it "X-Puppetry" - pending
> Sven's confirmation or disconfirmation - and I'll try to flesh out
> its defining characteristics.
>
> The art of "traditional" puppetry (to start with a ridiculously crude
> generalization) lies in making the viewer forget that the puppet is
> not alive.  One might say that this art is predicated on, and
> operates fully _within_, the viewer's tendency to perceive as alive
> things that move and behave in certain ways.  This is a theatrical
> art in which, again speaking crudely, the puppets "play", or "stand
> in for", living characters, roughly the way human or animal actors
> would - and in most cases nothing of the gist of the spectacle would
> be lost  if the characters were, instead, played by living actors.
> No essential feature of the spectacle _depends_ on the fact that the
> "players" are, in fact, inanimate objects.
>
> X-puppetry, on the other hand, puts in the foreground the inanimate
> nature of its puppets and objects.  Their movements and actions
> testify to the secret life of inanimate substances, the capability of
> everyday objects to stage nightmarish rebellions, the languid dreams
> of dolls, the seductive charm of automata.  It is a liminal art,
> concerned with the secret transactions and borderlines between the
> living and the inanimate, the organic and the inorganic, the viewer
> who wants to insuflate things with life and the things which long to
> be alive but can never fully pass over the border.   This is
> X-puppetry's universe, focus, and playing field.
>
> But neo-puppetry, of course, may be something altogether different...
>
> -m
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